Monday, 19 Oct 2026

A moist morning on the Downs, with a heavy dew and water dripping from the trees, and in places just a hint of a rising mist. Not the best conditions for finding insects.

Nevertheless, I added another mirid bug to my Downs list, finding a Hazel Bug (Pantilius tunicatus) on some hazel catkins. This is one of the latest bugs to appear in the year, only in September and October.

On the same Common Hazel (Corylus avellana) tree I located a Hazel ‘big bud’ gall, which is an abnormal growth of bud scale-leaves in response to the presence of a colony of hundreds of microscopic white mites (Phytoptus avellanae).

Insects may not like the very wet conditions, but snails do. I found two different species on the same large Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) leaf. The first of these is a Strawberry Snail (Trochulus striolatus), a black-bodied snail with coarse growth ridges on the whorls of its spiral shell. The second is a Kentish Snail (Monacha cantiana), an orange-bodied snail also in the same family, Hygromiidae, as T. striolatus.

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